Quantified Self

There is a massive amount of health-tech being developed at the moment, much of which is about allowing you to monitor your own vital statistics. I'm sure it will get more detailed in the future but its a great start.

I'll hopefully start reviewing some home/self-monitoring gadgets soon, and report back on ease of use and accuracy.

I've been taking my blood pressure a couple of times a month for years now - it's a bit of a manual process still - which has allowed me to set myself a reduction target (with noticeable effects in a year) and, as importantly, gives me a baseline to compare future trends with. I'll spot any change months, maybe years, before any physical symptoms allowing me to address it in time. And if it suddenly jumps up the doctor doesn't have to guess whether I've got general hypertension or its something more acute - I'll be able to confidently say that a high blood pressure it abnormal for my body.

Although the club is primarily interested in monitoring one's health, the quantified self movement is not restricted to that alone and encompasses measuring anything you can about yourself for its own sake. Likewise, although QS is facilitated through the use of technology, technology is not a prerequisite for QS, it can equally be done using just pen and paper.

Cholesterol

What is Cholesterol - How To Reduce Cholesterol Naturally - AntiAgingSolutions (YouTube) - 1-Feb-2012
Good animation of the process of atherosclerosis

Resources

The quantified self (video) - TED - Jun-2010
At TED@Cannes, Gary Wolf (one of the founders of QS) gives a 5-min intro to using mobile apps and always-on gadgets to track and analyze your body, mood, diet, spending — just about everything in daily life you can measure — in gloriously geeky detail

Quantified Self Labs - http://quantifiedself.com/
Serves the Quantified Self user community worldwide by producing international meetings, conferences and expositions, community forums, web content and services, and a guide to self-tracking tools.

Lab Tests Online-UK
Independent information from a collaboration of professional societies representing the clinical laboratory community.

PrivateHealthScreening - http://privatehealthscreen.org/
We are a group of doctors who are concerned about the safety and the ethics of private screening tests. We are worried that the companies who charge you for these tests are not giving consumers full and fair information about them.

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